High-schooler finds solace in ice cream, downtime

I would like to preface this personal narrative with a warning and apology: At the beginning of this quarantine I was a high school sophomore, and since then I have endured summer break and a global pandemic stuck at home. I have not written in quite a while, nor worked on my grammar. Let’s hope they edit this.

My name is Cara, and I am now a junior at a rural Ohio school southwest of Dayton. I remember the day the long spring break was announced last school year; I was devastated. Not because I would miss school or friends or teachers — even though I do sorely miss them more and more everyday — but because on May 20, my school was supposed to bring in the Kona Ice shaved ice truck as a special treat.

Although I understand this might be a minor nuisance to most, this really saddened me because my love of frozen treats knows no bounds. This quarantine has very much affected my athletic ability, because I have gone through about a quart of ice cream every two days. Seriously. I don’t, however, regret even one scoop.

I also recall when quarantine first began, and people my age were going

crazy because they wanted to be with friends and attend parties and get out of the house. I learned something about myself those first few weeks, and that was that I enjoy having downtime.

Between school, musicals, cross country, track and other extracurriculars, I never really had much of it. In fact, I realized during the first few weeks of the pandemic that the last time I had a surplus of downtime was the summer before seventh grade! Let’s just say that it has been nice to just unwind, read books and, as always, eat ice cream!

I did, however, suffer from a moment of deep and inexplicable wanderlust recently. It has always been my dream to travel the world; I wanted to start with Europe and make my way around the globe. I suppose this might have been brought on so suddenly by my bingewatching of “The Great British Baking Show” and reading “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I quickly realized, however, that to travel to Europe, you actually need a passport, money that isn’t from Monopoly and, of course, to not be in the middle of a pandemic. Unfortunately, I was missing all three.

The need didn’t go away, though, and I found myself hatching a plan. I started by asking my parents if I could prepare dinner. I made blueberry scones, Yorkshire tea and little finger sandwiches, and we all treated ourselves to a nice afternoon tea. Though it wasn’t Europe itself, it definitely helped satiate my desire to go there.

Other things I have done during this quarantine include running for cross country, reading a variety of books and having a Harry Potter movie marathon, — I have read all the books a million times and yet never watched the films! I also made little terrariums and have enjoyed many hikes.

One other thing I did was spend my

Sweet 16 in quarantine! That was a strange experience for me because on one hand, I was bummed at the prospect of not celebrating with friends and family. But on the other hand I was really just ecstatic that I had turned 16! Of course we celebrated with plenty of ice cream.

That about wraps it up for me and my quarantine experience. Please note however, that this pretty much changes every day. For now, classes at Valley View High School are scheduled to resume on Sept. 8 with a mix of in-school and online learning. Until then, though, I am just going to sit back with a nice book and a quart of ice cream.

Cara Holthaus, 16, lives in Farmersville.